• Tag Archives Lakota

  • Spotlight Turned Off

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Summer                                                    Waning Grandchildren Moon

    Thank god, I’m done with the spotlight.  Please never again.  Interrupting people on their journey through the museum, a private journey done under their guidance, is intrusive, invasive.

    I had two folks on the Anishinabe to Zapotec Tour, Carl and Carol.  When I said, I’ll bet you’ve got jokes on that over the years, Carl said, nope. We haven’t been together that long.  We wandered in the galleries looking at the kachina, the house screen, the Bella Coola frontlet, the transformation mask, the Nayarit house and the Valdivian owl.  I told them the story of turtle, loon, beaver and muskrat, the pointed out the turtle sign on the Lakota fancy dress.  It was a good tour, engaged and interested.

    Spoke with Margaret afterward.  She got me up to date on Sierra Club work and sent me a quick note with a timeline for the legcom process.  I’m also to call CURA and Macalester seeking interns.

    Finally got over to Big Brain comics and picked three issues of the Good Minnesotan, a comic done by an MIA guard and her husband. The guy behind the counter shaved his beard and looks like a slightly pudgy groucho marx.  A lot like a slightly pudgy groucho marx.


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  • Museum Work

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Summer                               Waxing Grandchildren Moon

    In Hopi culture Ruth would now have a total of 8 kachina dolls, each in a place of honor and used to explain to her the symbolism of the Kachina personated by Hopi dancers during their 6 months residence on the mesas.  Gabe would not yet be included in a kiva, but that time would not be far off.  In these ways the Hopi faith tradition passed from parents to children.

    I had four people at the kachina doll spotlight and two on my tour.  Plenty in my world, perhaps not in the museum’s.  Lance and his mom, Jan, went on the tour.  We started with the kachina, moved to the wonderful housescreen from a Tlingit clan house and stopped by the Olmec mask, the ball game clay figure and the Valdivian owl, a newby like the kachina and the housescreen.  From there we saw the Lakota woman’s fancy dress with its turtle motif and looked in general at the objects there, then ended with Whiteman’s wonderful modern piece.  The heart line idea, that a line connects your heart to your mind and that it’s shape reveals your ethical and personal development hit home.  Jan asked Lance how he thought his heartline was.  Profound.

    Back home, tired and ready for a nap.


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